“I’m sorry.” She held out a plastic bag to him. “I can’t.”

Flashes of the princess tripped through Rehv’s brain, and he reminded himself of how good it felt to do right by Ehlena-and erase her number from his phone. He had no business courting her. None at all.

“I understand.” He took the pills from her. “And thank you for these.”

“Take two four times a day. Ten days. Promise me?”

He nodded once. “Promise.”

“Good. And try to go see Havers, will you?”

There was an awkward moment, and then she lifted her hand. “Okay…so, bye.”

Ehlena turned away, and he opened the glass panel with his mind, not trusting himself to get too close to her.

Oh, please don’t go. Please don’t, he thought.

He just wanted to feel…clean for a little while.

Just as she walked out, she stopped and his heart pounded.

Ehlena glanced back, the wind ruffling the pale wisps around her lovely face. “With food. You need to take them with food.”

Right. Medical information. “I’ve got plenty of that here.”

“Good.”

After he shut the door, Rehv watched her disappear into the shadows and had to make himself turn away.

Walking slowly and using his cane, he went down the wall of glass and around the corner into the glow of the dining room.

Two candles lit. Two place settings of silver. Two glasses for wine. Two glasses for water. Two napkins folded precisely and laid on top of two plates.

He sat down on the chair he’d been going to give to her, the one to his right, the position of honor. He rested his cane against his thigh and put the plastic bag down on the ebony table, smoothing it out so that the antibiotics were resting one next to another in a neat and orderly row.

He wondered why they hadn’t come in a little orange bottle with a white label on it, but whatever. She had brought them to him here. That was the main thing.

Sitting in the silence, surrounded by candlelight and the scent of the roast beef he’d just taken out of the oven, Rehv stroked the plastic bag with his numb forefinger. Sure as shit he was feeling something, though. In the dead center of his chest, he had an ache behind his heart.

He’d done a lot of evil deeds over the course of his life. Big ones and small.

He’d set people up just to mess with them, whether they were rogue dealers infringing on his turf, or johns who didn’t treat his whores right, or idiots who screwed around at his club.

He’d leveraged the vices of others to his benefit. Sold drugs. Sold sex. Sold death in the form of Xhex’s special skills.

He’d fucked for all the wrong reasons.

He’d maimed.

He’d murdered.

And yet, none of that had bothered him at the time. There had been no second thoughts, no regrets, no empathy. Just more schemes, more plans, more angles to be discovered and exploited.

Here at this empty table, though, in this empty penthouse, he felt the ache in his chest and knew it for what it was: Regret.

It would have been extraordinary to deserve Ehlena.

But that was just one more thing he wasn’t ever going to feel.

TWENTY-SEVEN

As the Brotherhood met in his study, Wrath kept an eye on John from his vantage point behind the frilly desk. Across the way, the kid looked like roadkill. His face was pale and his big body was still and he hadn’t participated in the discussion at all. The scent of his emotions was the worst part of it, though: There was none. Not the stinging, nostril-bracing bite of anger. Not the acrid, smoky blow of sadness. Not even the lemony pitch of fear.

Nothing. As he stood among the Brothers and his two best friends, he was insulated by his nonresponsiveness and his numbed-out trance…with them, but not really.

Not good.

Wrath’s headache, which like his eyes and his ears and his mouth seemed to be permanently attached to his skull, made a renewed assault into his temples, and he sat back in his pansy-ass chair in the hope that a spinal realignment might ease the squeeze.

No luck.

Maybe a cranial amputation would work. God knew Doc Jane was good with a saw.

Over in the ugly green armchair, Rhage bit down on a Tootsie Pop, breaking one of the many thumb-up-the-ass silences that had marked the meeting.

“Tohr couldn’t have gone far,” Hollywod muttered. “He’s not strong enough.”

“I checked the Other Side,” Phury said from the speakerphone. “He’s not with the Chosen.”

“How about we do a drive-by of his old house,” Butch suggested.

Wrath shook his head. “I can’t imagine he’d go there. So many memories.”

Shit, not even the mention of that home John had spent time in elicited anything from the kid. But at least it was finally dark so they could go out and look for Tohr.

“I’m going to stay here and see if he comes back,” Wrath said as the double doors opened and V strode in. “I want the rest of you out searching for him in the city, but before you go, first let’s get an update from our very own Katie Couric.” He nodded at Vishous. “Katie?”

V’s glare was the ocular version of a fully extended middle finger, but he got on with it. “Last night, on the police blotter, there was a report filed by a Homicide detective. Dead body was found at the address where those gun crates came from. Human. Pizza delivery guy. Single knife wound through the chest. No doubt the poor bastard walked into something he shouldn’t have. I just finished hacking into the case details and what do you know, I found a note in it about a black, oily stain on the wall next to the door.” There was a grumble of curses, many of which included the f-word. “Yeah, well, here’s the interesting part. Police noted that a Mercedes had been spotted in the parking lot about two hours before the Domino’s manager called in that his employee hadn’t returned to work after delivering to that addy. And one of the neighbors saw a blond man, natch, get into it with another guy who was dark haired. She said it was weird seeing that kind of flashy sedan in the area.”

“A Mercedes?” Phury said from the phone.

Rhage, having ground another lollipop to its royal reward, pitched a little white stick into the wastepaper basket. “Yeah, since when has the Lessening Society put that kind of cash into their wheels?”

“Exactly,” V said. “Makes no damn sense. But here’s the shit. Witnesses also reported seeing a suspicious-looking black Escalade there the night before…with a man in black carrying off…oh, gee, what was it…crates, yeah, four fucking crates from the back of that quartet of apartments.”

As his roommate stared pointedly at Butch, the cop shook his head. “But there was no mention that they got the plates on the E. And we switched the set we had on it as soon as I got back. As for the Merc? Witnesses mistake things all the time. The blond and the other guy could have had nothing to do with the murder.”

“Well, I’m going to keep an eye on things,” V said. “I don’t think there’s any chance the police are going to tie it to something involving our world. Hell, a lot of things leave black stains, but we want to be prepared.”

“If the detective on it is the one I’m thinking of, he’s a good one,” Butch said quietly. “A very good one.”

Wrath got to his feet. “Okay, sun’s down. Get out of here. John, I want to talk to you privately for a moment.”

Wrath waited for the doors to close behind the last of his brothers before he spoke. “We’re going to find him, son. Don’t worry.” No response. “John? What’s doing?”

The kid just crossed his arms over his chest and stared straight ahead.

“John…”

John unfurled his hands and signed something that looked to Wrath’s piss-poor eyes to be, I’m going to go out with the others.

“The hell you are.” That brought John’s head around sharply. “Yeah, so not happening, given the fact that you’re a zombie. And fuck off with the I’m-fines. If you think for even a split second that I’m going to let you fight, you are talking out your damn ass.”